Pentaquarks Current Affairs - 2019

Scientists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have discovered a new class of exotic subatomic particles called the Pentaquarks.

The discovery was made by the scientist’s after watching the decaying of a subatomic type particle known as the Lambda B baryon.

Facts about Pentaquark

Pentaquark was first predicted to exist in the 1960s and its name was coined by Israeli theoretical physicist Harry J. Lipkin.

It is a particle consisting of five quarks (any of a group of subatomic particles carrying a fractional electric charge) bounded together.

These qauarks are elementary particles that exist in six variations known as flavors having unusual names of up, down, top, bottom, strange and charm.

These elementary particles bind together in different combinations to form a range of composite particles. Most commonly known combinations are neutrons and protons, consisting of three quarks each.

Applications: This discovery will allow physicists to understand the quantum chromodynamics (i.e. study of strong fundamental force describing the interactions between quarks and gluons which make up proton, neutron and pion).

In addition, it might help to shed light on the physics of neutron stars.

Note: In 1964, US physicist Murray Gell-Mann had revolutionised the understanding of the structure of matter. He had proposed that a category of particles known as baryons, which includes protons and neutrons and three fractionally charged objects called quarks. For this work Gell-Mann was awarded Nobel Prize in physics in 1969.